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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25076419">be careful not to show it</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen'>mornen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>I see a darkness in you [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Cuddling, Depression, Engagement, F/M, Kissing, Loneliness, PTSD, Romance, soul bonding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:08:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,345</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25076419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>'There are certain things you should know about me.' Elrond stands with his back to the window. The light forms a halo around him, turns his black hair gold on the edges. ‘I’m not good, like they say I am.’ </p><p>Celebrían sits on his bed. The lace in her dress scratches against her side. She runs her hand over the lace. </p><p>Elrond’s bedspread is deep red and threaded with gold. It stands dark against the white pillows. She always imagined his room blue. But it is white and deep brown. The ceiling is wooden and carved with stars and moons and little suns. (How many stars in his sky?)</p><p>'It's all right,' she says. 'You don't have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>I see a darkness in you [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. was it something they said?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>'There are certain things you should know about me.' Elrond stands with his back to the window. The light forms a halo around him, turns his black hair gold on the edges. ‘I’m not good, like they say I am.’ </p><p>Celebrían sits on his bed. The lace in her dress scratches against her side. She runs her hand over the lace. </p><p>Elrond’s bedspread is deep red and threaded with gold. It stands dark against the white pillows. She always imagined his room blue. But it is white and deep brown. The ceiling is wooden and carved with stars and moons and little suns. (How many stars in his sky?)</p><p>'It's all right,' she says. 'You don't have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’ </p><p>And he nods, and he swallows, and the sun drops low in the sky, making his black hair glow red around the edges. </p><p>It is winter. Winter, and the sky is clear. Celebrían traces the six points of the star beneath her finger. She traces the eight points of the star near her knee. Her fingers shake. </p><p>‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Should I put it away?’</p><p>Celebrían stands, and he folds the bedspread and places it away in the closet. He shuts the door. She sits down on the white bed. </p><p>‘He was always so kind,’ she says. It is too much to say and not enough all at once. She misses him. Celebrimbor, who carried her on his shoulders and stitched gems into her hair with a silver needle. </p><p>Elrond finally sits beside her. He touches her waist where the lace scratches. His hand lifts slowly, like it is heavy. Like it will drop again.</p><p>‘He was.’ </p><p>He wants to tell her, doesn’t he? He wants to tell her what’s wrong with him. She can feel it. It’s the sense she’s always had, telling her things about people. Her mother coaxed her in it, taught her, but hers has never been as precise as Galadriel’s, though sometimes it is stronger, and the things she learns bleed into her. </p><p>‘I’m not holy,’ Elrond says. ‘I’m not.’</p><p>‘I know.’ She knows he isn’t. She knows people expect it of him. </p><p>Maybe Melian was holy. Galadriel speaks of her as if she was. She was a Holy One, so wasn’t she holy? And Lúthien, and Dior, and Elwing: Wouldn’t they be too? And Eärendil is exalted. Already she can see the Evening Star slipping bright along the horizon. So Elrond will carry that. So he must carry it. But maybe he will also tell her what breaks inside of him and what points in his mind run wild with thoughts unholy or unwanted. </p><p>She touches his hand. </p><p>‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asks. ‘You don’t have a shirt beneath your dress.’</p><p>‘I’m glad you noticed,’ she says, and he smiles. ‘I’m not cold.’ </p><p>He draws his hand from her waist to her shoulder. Her hair is all loose and falls about her shoulders. He draws it over one shoulder, revealing her back and the row of buttons on her green dress. He runs his fingers down the length of her back, over the buttons.</p><p>He carries a rage inside of him. She can feel it in his touch, even though it isn’t a rage meant for her, even though he isn’t feeling it now, in this moment. But still it carries. This is what he means. It is a broken fëa that he is offering. It is stitched back together by his own hand. And how can you reach every part of yourself?</p><p>That’s why he asks, ‘do you really want to marry me?’ when they walk in the woods in the short evenings, even though she’s said yes already, will say yes again. He has to ask, because what if he hurts her? She will have to take each of his wounds, and she does not know for sure how deep they run. </p><p>But he loves her, and he is gentle. Gentle with her, gentle with everyone. How can he forgive things unforgivable? Was that a part of him born or one that he made from the pieces of himself he gathered from the ground where he fell. (Why didn’t anyone catch him?)</p><p>‘But maybe I have to know,’ she says. ‘What parts of you are broken. What you will do with this rage you carry. How it will shape me when you touch me.’ She laces her fingers with his and kisses his hand. ‘I know you think about such things. I know you cry in the night. Cry in the day. I know you fall to your knees weeping for something that you cannot have, and I want to know what it is and if I can give it to you. I don’t think I can, Elrond. Will you still love me if I can’t? Will you still love me if I’m not that strong?’ </p><p>He holds her in his arms. His knee presses against her leg. </p><p>‘Celebrían,’ he says, with care, like he’s reciting a poem that is only her name. ‘Celebrían, I am not asking you to save me. I just...’ He slips his arm beneath her legs and lifts her onto his lap. ‘I wish I hadn’t been this broken. I picked myself up, but I put the puzzle together wrong, all jagged at the edges.’ He kisses her softly. ‘But I won’t break, my love. And you don’t have to save me. But I need to know if you can take the pain of it. It is a deep pain, and it echoes. I don’t think I will ever be rid of it. Can you stay?’ </p><p>She feels the blunt, shouting rage of his fëa against hers. It is a deep pain. She feels it form inside of her, unfolding itself. This is a soul bond. They are tying themselves together. She must take these parts of him if she wants all of him. And he must take her pain too. But her pain has never ached like this. (Will it someday?)</p><p>His pain is like a canyon, reaching down so deep that you can’t see the bottom, and so wide you can’t see the other side. There is a fire behind you. You cannot stay. Will the fall be worse than the flames? </p><p>It is like a forest in the night when all the stars have been hidden by the clouds and there is nothing to turn back to and nothing to press on to. </p><p>It is drowning in a rain storm because the rain is coming down too fast for you to breathe. And bleeding out on the floor at a party and no one will turn their head when you cry. It aches, and every part of you is screaming for something too far away to touch. </p><p>‘I didn’t know it was possible to be that lonely,’ she says without thinking, and he draws her tighter against him. ‘I didn’t know.’ His breath is warm against her ear. He runs his hand along her back. She wonders how it is that he is comforting her. She kisses him. She runs her fingers through his hair. His eyes are wide and grey with flecks of gold visible if you look closely enough. </p><p>‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘how you survive a pain like that.’ </p><p>‘You learn to fall without breaking,’ he says. ‘You learn to bleed without dying.’ </p><p>She kisses him. The sky is grey. It begins to snow.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. you don't have to answer</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The snow curtains outside the window. It is the wet kind from which you sculpt snow horses or that you pile high and build tunnels into. Celebrían gets lost in the snow, her father says. He’s always put her in a red coat in the winter so that he won’t lose her in the silver and the white of the vastness of the snow. Sometimes she thinks she already has been lost in it.</p><p>Elrond holds her tightly on his lap. His hand feels cold against hers. She wishes she knew why. A log falls in the fire, the one beneath it giving out as it turns from wood to ash. Sparks fling out around the logs, and then it all settles down again.</p><p>She touches the lace on the side of her dress. It feels rough against her skin again, like bark trying to creep into her skin.</p><p>‘Celebrían?’ His fingers run up her back again. They rest on the top of her dress, on the top button. ‘May I?’</p><p>‘Yes.’</p><p>He undoes the button and then the one beneath it and the one beneath that, down her back. He slides his hand over her skin. His hand is warm now. She slips the dress off one shoulder and then the other. The bodice of the dress falls down around her waist. She takes her arms out of the sleeves. Her hair falls across her bare chest, shimmering over her necklace: a blue diamond on a silver chain.</p><p>She slides the dress down her legs, and he helps her. It falls to the floor. It lies green on the garnet red of the rug. Her skin is somehow silver even in the golden light of the fire. There are only bands of gold where the light hits hardest, and those threaten to be white, like silver caught in a light too bright for it.</p><p>‘What could you never forgive?’ she asks, and he frowns.</p><p>‘Are you all right, dear?’ His hand stills on her skin.</p><p>She is all right, but she is thinking of drowning. Drowning but the water is thick and hot, and it feels like death on her skin. He kisses her temple, a silent kiss with soft lips that do not move beyond a press.</p><p>Sometimes she thinks she should have been a soldier. But she doesn’t like loud noises, the smell of blood. The sharpness of it all, the screaming. There are other ways to fight than with a sword or a spear, but when the whole world is dying, they no longer seem to matter. And she turned away from the blood and the fire. And Elrond faced Sauron and somehow lived.</p><p>He parents call her gentle. Some people call her parents cowards.</p><p>‘Celebrían?’ his voice is soft, cradling her name.</p><p>‘I like it here,’ she says. The fire burns lows.</p><p>‘I’ll get you a gown.’ He sets her down on the white bed. She lies down on it, naked, and wonders if she could get lost in it too, like she gets lost in the snow banks, like she gets lost behind her parents.</p><p>She covers her left eye, and the room goes dark and blurry. You can’t tell looking at her that she may still lose vision in her right eye completely. She drops her hand down and his room is again white and mahogany. He stands by the bed with a gold nightgown. She slips it on.</p><p>He’s put her dress over the back of his chair and blown out the candles. She gets under the covers and he slips in beside her. They lie side by side, but only their arms touch.</p><p>‘What did you mean?’ he says. ‘About what I could forgive?’</p><p>Celebrían shakes her head once. Her head sinks into the pillow, cutting his face in two. She watches his one eye with her one eye. He takes her hand beneath the blankets. It feels hot now. His skin is always changing temperature. The flecks of gold in his eyes change position.</p><p>Sometimes, she thinks he will open his throat and pull out feathers.</p><p>His fingers brush hot against her leg. He pushes the hem of her nightgown up and rests his hand, fingers spread, on her thigh.</p><p>She kisses him. Maybe she won’t have to answer his question. She doesn’t know what she meant except that he has forgiven so much and she does not know if he can forgive her if she falls apart when they wed.</p><p>She has been called gentle enough to know that others might think her weak. And she thinks that he must be the strongest person she has ever met, and there is a fear creeping inside her that he will find a weakness that he cannot overlook.</p><p>‘You aren’t weak,’ he says. ‘It is not a weakness to be gentle.’</p><p>She runs her finger across his brow and down his nose. It stops against his lips. He kisses her fingertip.</p><p>‘Do I disappear?’ she whispers.</p><p>She blends into landscapes. She is built strong like her mother, but she is shorter than her parents, and you can’t see her if she stands behind them. So her father wraps her in red in the winter. And her mother ties blue ribbons in her hair in the summer. And tonight she wore a dark green dress and became a forest with mist above it, all silver in the moonlight.</p><p>His finger brushes out her name on her leg. He is considering the question. Considering his answer. He speaks carefully always.</p><p>His finger spells out I love you on her leg over the raised white scar that lines her thigh. If she thinks about it, she can still hear mother’s scream as she fell from the broken staircase. She’d never heard her mother scream like that. She’s never heard it since. But it was so long ago, wasn’t it, running from Eregion? She hit her head so hard she barely remembers it.</p><p>But the thought of losing her makes her mother mad. She’s lost everyone though. Celebrían cannot imagine.</p><p>‘Anyone can disappear,’ he says. ‘If others aren’t careful.’</p><p>The snow is a fury behind the window. The mountains, the trees, are lost. It is dark, and the wind is spinning. His fëa aches with a pain that she has never known.</p><p>‘I don’t want to disappear,’ she says.</p><p>He draws her into his arms, beneath the covers, in the bed, in the darkening room, while the wind bites and screams.</p><p>‘I won’t let you.’</p><p>The red fire burns low.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>from an older draft. this does not follow lace much. it’s an idea for elven marriage taking at least a year to be finalised because it takes a long time for the souls to be bonded</p><p>also this is working with my headcanon that Celebrimbor was also very skilled in needle craft (his fingers can never stay still)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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